Читать книгу First Time Director - Gil Bettman - Страница 9

PREFACE

When I first started teaching directing, I read every “how to” book on the subject that I could find. I knew what I was looking for: a text that taught what I had learned during my 20-year career as a director in Hollywood. My plan was to draw on those lessons in order to provide my students with the information they wanted above all else. I had gone through the M.F.A. program at UCLA when I was an aspiring director. I could remember what I had wanted then, and I could not imagine it being any different today. I wanted my professors to teach me the directing skills that I needed to know to break through and start a career in Hollywood. Now, 25 years later, I knew that the particular nature of my industry experience made me especially qualified to teach them this. After all, I had broken into the business not once, but three times — first as an episodic television director, then as a rock video director, and finally as a director of low budget features. But as hard as I tried, I could not find a book that would serve as a companion text for the course I envisioned. Ironically, almost all the books I read contained a wealth of well-articulated, accurate information. But my experience had taught me that most of this information was useless to a first time director. Even those passages that were invaluable could not be learned from — because they were indistinguishably mixed in with those which were of no use. That was when I decided I had to write this book.

How can it be that the other books on directing do not contain these crucial lessons? As far as I can tell, it is because they were written by very intelligent, knowledgeable people who have never really broken into the business and maintained a viable directing career. These individuals may have had an ancillary role on some mainstream Hollywood projects, or done some directing on the periphery of the industry. But, unlike myself, they have never really once kicked down the door to direct a project which opened nationwide in theaters or was aired on primetime network television. Their knowledge of filmmaking was encyclopedic and academic, but due to their lack of practical experience, they burdened the first time director with superfluous information. What a first time director needs is a survival guide, not an encyclopedia. I intend this book to be that survival guide.

Unless you are an established Hollywood scriptwriter or cinematographer — someone like a Larry Kasdan or a Jan DeBont — it is highly unlikely that a major studio is going to put up the money for your first feature film. Inevitably, your big break is going to be a day late and a dollar short. You are going to have to endure that which Spike Lee, Kevin Smith, Doug Liman, Neil LaBute, the Wachowski brothers, and all of the hot young directors working in today's Hollywood endured when they started out: You are going to be charged with making a film in record time, on a minimal budget, with a shorthanded, inexperienced crew Even if the funds to make your breakthrough movie or TV show or rock video are ultimately coming from a big name studio, network, or record label with deep pockets, the fact remains that you are not yet bankable. And until you are, you can be sure that the bean counters at those big companies will be doling out those funds to you in nickels and dimes. No matter whether the money is coming from you or your Uncle Harry or MCA Inc., the budgetary restrictions are going to be equally constraining.

Under these circumstances, things are bound to go wrong on a regular basis. The atmosphere is going to be chaotic. The crew and the production support are going to be under stress. And yet, as first time director, you are going to have to rise to the occasion and do that which a director must do in order to make the film he wants to make. You are going to have to be so self-assured and so capable that you manage to allay everyone's fears and pull form out of the chaos. If you seem hesitant, or if your solutions are not up to the problems, those on whom you are depending for support — the assistant director, the cinematographer, or the producer — will not hesitate to supercede you and take control of the film, whether out of jealousy, fear, or necessity. In order to prevent this from happening, and to be certain that you get to make the film that you want to make, you are going to need a very specific kind of understanding of the director's craft — an understanding tailored to these unusual circumstances. That is what this book provides.

This book focuses on what a director must know to control the set, because this is the key to his success as a first time director. I am amazed at the amount of pages devoted to a director's responsibilities in preproduction and postproduction in the existing books on directing. As a director, I always looked forward to preproduction and especially postproduction because, when compared to the chaos of the production, they were utterly stress-free. If, during these phases in the making of a film, I ever found that I did not know something that was required of me, I simply told those who were expecting me to make a well-informed decision that I would “think it over and get back to them tomorrow” Then I would go home and call a friend who was an expert in the field and get him to fill in the gaps in my knowledge. The next day, I would return and casually deliver the word from on high.

On the set there is no tomorrow Directing on the set is like being at the helm of a river raft going through increasingly precipitous rapids. There is no stopping, no turning back, and every decision must be instantaneous and correct, otherwise disaster is imminent. The smaller the budget, the smaller the raft, the fewer the oars, the greater the likelihood that — if you make a wrong turn — the boat will flip or smash on the rocks. To continue the metaphor, preproduction is the planning which takes place before the raft is put in the water and postproduction is like rowing across a calm lake at the bottom of the rapids. The existing books focus about 90 % on what comes before and after that white water and about 10 % on what it takes to get through that critical phase. It should be the other way around. This book will fill this need.

It will tell you everything you need to know about the easy stuff — preproduction and postproduction — so you can convincingly discharge your duties as a director in those areas. It is going to tell how, while the set is being lit, you can take a bad performance and make it respectable, or a respectable performance and make it good. If you are lucky enough to actually have an actor on the set who is capable of delivering a good performance, this book will teach you what you will need to know to take the good performance and make it great. (I am not going to burn up pages with sense memory exercises and lengthy rehearsal techniques; you will never get to use them. Because unless your actors are sufficiently committed to your film to donate their time gratis, there will be no money for rehearsals.) All the time you are going to get is that which elapses between the first walk-through and when the set is lit. You may not be able to bring forth miracles in that span, but this book will enable you to come as close to such alchemy as is humanly possible.

Will this book teach you how to move your camera like John Woo or Michael Bay? Actually, yes. By extrapolation you can take my approach to camera blocking and, budget permitting, move your camera all the time, in every imaginable way, like Woo and Bay. But it is unlikely your budget will permit you to do this. So this book is intended to teach how, within the constraints of your peanut-sized budget, you can emulate the camera technique of all those directors who are now setting the trends in the realm of mis en scene.

This book will arm you with the “silver bullets” which you are going to need to kill the demons which will be coming at you right and left on the set. Time and money are going to be in such short supply, all your solutions to all your problems are going to have to be lightning fast and deadly — instantaneous and spot-on. These silver bullets may not be the most elegant. They may not be Academy Award-winning examples of a director's craft. But they get the job done. You can worry about the Academy Award on your second film, or better still, your third. When you get to that level, you can read all the other books on directing. At that point, elegant solutions are going to be expected of you. Then you will able to afford them. For now, your goal should be to survive your directorial debut in the best shape possible. This book is your guide to survival. It will enable you to pull form from chaos and make the best film possible within the limited resources provided to you.